Homemade Marinara Sauce & Meal Ideas

Homemade Marinara Sauce & Meal Ideas

I’m not even joking with the color of this sauce! It was SO BRIGHT!! This year my little raised garden has had quite the beautiful crop of tomatoes and peppers and other vegetables, I am very lucky! So when I went dinner with the ladies from the Milwaukee Food Bloggers and was telling Maia from http://foodlesstraveled.wordpress.com/ about how I had made this amazing Marinara Sauce, she said she was looking for recipes because she has something like 40 tomato plants!! So this one’s for you Maia, hope you enjoy and find uses for your crop.

There’s a secret ingredient in this sauce…it’s adding two small potatoes! They add to the creamy texture once the sauce is put in the food processor before finishing it. I added a jalapeno and some crushed red pepper flakes and this sauce had a little hint of heat, nothing too spicy, but if you don’t like heat at all, skip those ingredients and add a stalk of celery instead.

With the sauce I made, I stored it in an airtight container in the fridge and made all sorts of dishes with it throughout the week. My two favorites were:

1-Pizza with fresh mozzarella cheese and basil, I just made one pizza dough from the recipe I use all the time found here and then used a few ladles full of the homemade sauce, sprinkled a 2 cup bag of shredded mozzarrella cheese and then topped with a few slices of fresh mozzarella cheese and sprinkled with fresh cut and chopped basil

2-Whole grain pasta with hot italian turkey sausage, parmesan cheese, and homemade marinara sauce. Cook the pasta according to directions. Cook the turkey sausage until almost done, then add 4 chopped up tomatoes and 2 cups of homemade marinara sauce and heat until bubbling. Serve sausage over pasta and finish with parmesan cheese…yum! This dish had a nice heat to it because of the heat from the turkey sausage and heat from the sauce.

2 small potatoes (this is the key to getting it smooth and creamy looking) peeled and chopped

¼ cup olive oil

1 Tbs salt

1 Tbs pepper

2 dried bay leaves

½ tsp crushed red pepper flakes

Instructions

Prep all your vegetables. In a large pot with a lid, heat the oil over a medium-high flame. Add the onions and garlic and saute until the onions are translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the jalapeno and potato slices, and the salt and pepper. Saute until all the vegetables are soft, about 10 minutes. Add the tomatoes and bay leaves and crushed red pepper flakes cook until the mixture bubbles, then reduce heat to low and cover with a lid. Simmer for an hour stirring every 10 minutes.Remove and discard the bay leaf. Season the sauce with more salt and pepper, to taste. Let cool for a few minutes (10 minutes) and then pour entire contents of pot into food processor and process until smooth and creamy looking-it will be a bright orange red color! Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.

3.2.1255

My little 1st crop, how gorgeous right?

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